[adatavizguy]

Off topic. When something is on the tip of my tongue, I don't search for it because I have a strange belief that what my mind is trying to do to remember it is fire off neurons associated with the thought or idea, near it, to create the action potential. It is strange that I will eventually remember it within hours or the next day. When the action potential fires the neuron, dendrites are formed between neurons strengthening the memory.

I wonder if there is any truth to that notion? That to solidify a memory, there can't be outside help, that electric chemical signal has to trigger firing the neurons associated with the memory to strengthen their connections.

[542354234235]

I seem to remember reading about how thinking about something on the tip of your tongue and failing makes it harder to remember in the future, because concentrating on trying to remember it strengthens pathways that don’t lead back to the memory. So when you try in the future, those failed paths are stronger and more likely to be used again, further reinforcing the wrong association. Letting it go and hoping it comes to you also might not work, but it doesn’t strengthen bad pathways, so is more likely to allow you to remember in the future.

[xxxtentachyon]

I feel like if this were true (searching doesn’t strengthen the original memory), it would lead to a dramatic difference in a cohort’s ability to remember trivial information that they learned a long time ago, but it also seems really hard to perform a trial for something like this.

[ficklepickle]

When I started learning programming, my French became much easier to recall. This was after ~ a decade of very infrequent French language use. Much of it has subsequently come back to me.

Sample size of 1, yadda, yadda. Make of it what you will. I think it is interesting.